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Pierre Weil
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What manifolds are bounded by RP^odd?

Real projective spaces ℝPn have ℤ/2 cohomology rings ℤ/2[x]/(xn+1) and total Stiefel-Whitney class (1+x)n+1 which is 1 when n is odd, so it follows that odd dimensional ones are boundaries of compact (n+1)-manifolds. My question is: are there any especially nice constructions of these (n+1)-manifolds?

I'm especially interested in the case n=3. I believe we can get an explicit example of a 4-manifold bound by ℝP3 using Rokhlin/Lickorish-Wallace but it doesn't look like that would generalize to higher dimensions at all easily. Are there a lot of different 4-manifolds with this property?

Pierre Weil
  • 576
  • 6
  • 10